Help calm me. House buying and selling stress

Continuation of this thread has been posted.

Midgey I can relate to the situation with tradesmen. We are having trouble getting them to actually turn up when they say they will just to look at the job. If they do they take ages to get back to us with a quote etc. and some as you say are so busy it would be next year before they would even look at a date to start the job. Our lockdown situation is not helping and the State government keep changing the restrictions. Last week they put a total stop to all construction work - other than emergency situations. - Oh and of course government projects!

On Monday week Melbourne will become the most locked down city in the world. Something to be proud of? NOT

Oh Kissingate, I do hope that your move gets you in before Christmas, seems such a long time you have been waiting. My daughter successfully moved but now is having trouble getting tradesmen, they are all booked up until next year!

Shandy - still waiting for probate house. We haven't seen anything else we like in our price band. Vendors solicitors informed ours yday paperwork still outstanding but hope to have everything in order by middle of October. Will see, if we are unpacked by xmas it will be a miracle.

And tidyskatemum, I hope she comes back to update us

I'd like it to keep going to see how kissngate and Yogi are, if you don't mind Spice101? I hope good things are happening for them both.

Spice would be good if you would continue this. Yes, it has slowed down as most, of not all, of the original posters are happily settled in their new homes. However, other people do keep popping in here and hopefully, this can be of assistance to them.

It seems this thread has slowed down enormously. Do people want to keep it going? As it is almost 1000 posts hence being shut down, I'm happy to do the link if wanted.

I've just seen it on the news and popped on to wish you well Spice101, what a fright for everyone, such a rare event there. Glad your house passed the test Stay safe.

My friend is on the San Andreas fault in California and always prepared as they are common - all her ornaments are blue tacked down.

Spice glad you and Mr S are both in one piece. And it was a good test of how solidly your home is built.

Hope your swimming pool hasn't got any cracks. As it will be your summer soon and no doubt you will be wanting a dip.

Well we found out this morning that our new home is pretty sound. There was an earthquake measuring 6 on the Richter scale. It started as a rumbling/rattling which appeared to be coming from the roof and grew in intensity. It lasted for about 40 seconds and sounded like a train was charging through the roof. It was centred about 150 kilometers north east of Melbourne but felt over most of Victoria and even into New South Wales and South Australia.

Fortunately no damage for us but reports are that this was the biggest earthquake ever in Australia. It was quite scary.

Hello Franbern, I was wondering how you are. Were the firemen able to sort the problem?

Just part of the expense of moving to a new place, Shandy. Always going to be something like that. Here I discovered that the fan in the bathroom and en-suite was not working. Assumed it was something simple like deliberate disconnection due to noise, etc. Turned out to be the motor - still the original one from when the flats were built in mid-80's and no longer working, or repairable. To replace entirely was have cost a small fortune. I was lucky that my electrician managed, eventhually to track down an re-conditioned one. Still cost me over a hundred quid.

However, as long as you are happy in the bungalow and, overall, it was a good move, then these things are just part of the 'fun' of home ownership

I knew I should have had the electrics checked before I purchased the bungalow, I was just trying to save money

I replaced a kitchen spotlight recently with a new bulb and it wouldn't work, so I rang the electrician. Two of his people have just turned up and it seems the 11 kitchen spotlights will need to be replaced with LED. And six in the bathroom as they aren't 'sealed'. And the smoke/heat alarms as they are dated 'replace by 2018'.

Argh! I don't think I'd have tried to renegotiate the price anyway, too many other people wanted it.

Thank you for the link Josieanne, I've book marked it. Garden is currently a wasp fest because of the plum tree.

Here
style-my-garden.co.uk/

Josieanne I would love to look at the website you mention. Unfortunately one thing I lack badly is imagination.

Wow, I've just noticed that this thread is creeping towards another 1000 posts. It must be the longest running discussion and the best!
I think I always knew how important the property market was to the economy, but the stamp duty holiday was like a shot of adrenaline and we have seen some insane rates of house price growth, especially in the area we chose to move to. I count my blessings every day that all our family x 3 pulled off our moves as quickly as we did, and the niggly problems with exchange dates and removal firms now seem a distant memory. I hope all those currently in the process manage to make things work for them. The stress is awful, but it does go away fairly quickly.
Good luck with the garden design Spice101. We are on week 4 of a garden makeover and are now held up waiting for the paving slabs to be delivered! The slatted fence panels were also unavailable so they had to make the fence with individual strips. It looks far more bespoke and amazingly has a slight curve where it hugs the bend in the road. The planting will need to wait until the spring. I found a really good website for planting designs if you are interested. It tells you how many plants are needed and puts together colours and styles you choose. It is of course for UK gardens, but might help a bit.

It has been quiet on this forum for a week or so. Hopefully that means all those in the process of buying or selling are making progress and too busy to report in. I do hope you are all soon sorted and in your new homes. The stress will not necessarily end then but it will be a different and more satisfying stress.

Another quiet week for me as we are still under lockdown restrictions and likely to be so for another couple of weeks at least. In spite of a strict lockdown Victoria's daily case numbers are increasing rapidly with no sign of them improving. Our vaccination rates are slowly climbing but we are still a long way from being at an acceptable rate.

Having bought quite a few things online and having received, assembled and put them all in place and no longer having a project, I was getting withdrawal symptoms. So I bit the bullet and had a landscape gardener come to look at giving our garden a complete make over. At the moment we have a very low maintenance, drought tolerant garden but it has no interesting plants and little or no colour. So we want a more traditional, albeit still very low maintenance. It will be interesting to see what the chap comes up with and how he incorporates our wants and needs.

While this house may not be our perfect one it is pretty close and I'm so glad we bought when we did as house prices have gone through the roof in the last 6 months. We thought the availability was low when we were looking but it is far less now, at least for what we were looking for.

Fingers crossed for you tidyskatemum.

I was playing with the idea of moving to one of the Scottish islands and joined the Facebook community pages for each one. Interesting to see how the community operates.

No, in Scotland it’s Land and Buildings Transaction Tax stand doesn’t apply. If there’s just a delay of a few days we can probably get the movers to take our stuff to Oban and leave it with a local carrier for later delivery. That would be less expensive and would avoid trying to find another 3 day window for the movers. If the mortgage offer is completely withdrawn we are up the creek without a paddle!

So sorry to read this tidyskatemum - will you still benefit from the partial stamp duty reduction? Did you take out insurance with your removal company in the event of change? If the worst scenario causes you a delay, would your removal company store your items for a few days?

New to this thread but definitely stressed! Agreed an early completion date with buyers but now they have applied for mortgage funds the lenders have demanded more information and are taking their time over checking it. Completion is supposed to be next week. We are actually moving to a Scottish island so the move is quite complicated, taking 3 days and necessitating a ferry booking which is like gold dust. We're trying to ignore the possibility of the lender withdrawing their offer, risking the loss of our dream house, and just look at the consequences of delay- extra removal costs, not actually being able to get on a ferry etc. I'm being driven to gin!

My brother and sisters in law upped the offer on the bungalow and they had it accepted. Her father's house went on the market today. Hopefully he will accept an offer soon.

That's good news Pittcity. Thanks for the reminder to buy one of those 'insulation' bags to put over my outside tap.